James Giago Davies
DAPL reality an ugly one
Nothing defeats Indians faster than other Indians
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nativesunnews.today At some point every Lakota has to make a decision. Are we really one people, united in the face of Wasicu oppression, or are there always legitimate reasons to bail out, switch sides, abandon allies, and shake hands with Wasicu facilitators, facilitators making promises, threatening consequences, confident the weak-minded lack of resolve in tribal leadership can be targeted, turned, exploited and used as a cudgel to put down any principled Lakota dissent against federal or corporate interests. Time and again we foolishly equate tribal leadership with the duly elected tribal leadership of BIA controlled reservations. We fail to understand that these tribal leaders are the Wasicu expression of what they want our lives to be dictated by. These tribal leaders work for the BIA long before they bother working for you, and when push comes to shove, most of them, not all, because some are men of high character and courageous resolve, but most are creatures of Wasicu process, and they internally process even the most vital and elemental of tribal concerns through that distorted prism. They become a compromised expression of Wasicu priorities, while they stand in public as the face of the Lakota Nation. These men are not your leaders. They are part of the oppressive process which crushed your culture and placed you in a Wasicu dominated reality, still nowhere near done taking even the scraps treaties have left the Lakota, treaties the Wasicu still won’t honor, treaties he still uses his corrupt legal system to undermine and violate. The danger has never been assimilation through exposure to knowledge and understanding, exposure to other cultures, their history, their ideas, their passions, and their technology. The danger has been internalizing the values of money and power, values which even the average Wasicu balks at, instinctively understanding they are the corrupted priorities of privileged self-interest, something even Wasicu know are dark, ugly, culturally destructive threats, every person of conscience, regardless of their heritage and culture, must reject.
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: DAPL reality an ugly one (Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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